MSC Group's cruise division joins Green Marine Europe Label

This voluntary environmental certification programme for the maritime industry was launched in 2020 to create a mechanism to support shipowners in demonstrating their environmental performance on a European scale and follows the success of Green Marine’s North American environmental certification programme.  

MSC Group’s Cruise Division has pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and its two brands, MSC Cruises and Explora Journeys, are using the Green Marine Europe Label’s programme guidelines to track annual progress across eight key performance indicators: aquatic invasive species, pollutant air emissions – sulphur oxides and particulate matter, pollutant air emissions – nitrogen oxides,  greenhouse gas emissions, oily discharge, waste management, underwater noise and responsible ship recycling. 

Annual environmental performance results

The two brands have committed to submit their annual environmental performance results to an external accredited verification party, and to publish them. 

Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman of the Cruise Division of MSC Group, said: 'Even while we tackled the many challenges of the past two years, we never lost sight of our responsibilities in the long term. In line with our commitment to sustainability and our pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050, the Green Marine Europe Label will help us demonstrate our progress and share this with our guests, the communities that we serve and all other stakeholders.  All of this, while we continue our work on several projects studying the development of green fuels and technology solutions and we look forward to bringing them to life soonest.'

Minas Myrtidis, MSC Cruise Management’s VP environmental operations and compliance added, ‘Certification to the Green Marine Europe Label across our entire fleet will further demonstrate our commitment to environmental sustainability as it also reflects our desire to continually improve our performance in that space.’

Extension of North American programme

The Green Marine Europe Label is the result of a partnership of the North American environmental certification programme Green Marine, which has been operational for 10 years, and the Surfrider Foundation, a leading NGO in ocean and maritime protection in the European Union. The partnership was established in 2019, and the programme was launched in the spring of 2020. 

MSC claims it is the first major global cruise company to achieve the Green Marine Europe Label.